


Bad Day at Devil's Gate

by WrathChilde



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Demons, Friendship, Gen, Hunters & Hunting, Minor Character Death, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1436383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrathChilde/pseuds/WrathChilde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's canon that Bill Harvelle died out on a hunt with John Winchester, something Ellen never forgave. But what really happened that day?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Day at Devil's Gate

**Singer Salvage Yard, South Dakota**   
**April 1986**

Bobby rubbed his eyes and looked up from the ponderous tome he’d been studying. There was only so much research a man could do before the words started to blur, especially when some of the old books were crammed with closely-packed text like they were afraid they’d run out of paper. He briefly considered that he might need reading glasses, but even a guy with a closet full of flannel could be vain.

The house was pretty quiet, save the hum of the old fridge and the sound of some inane cartoon floating back to him from the living room. Sam would be there, sitting on the couch and solemnly watching TV with his little hands curled around a cup of juice. That was how he spent most of the day, just biding his time till Dean got home from school. Then the two of them would tear around like wild things, screaming and hollering and finding new ways to get in trouble.

Bobby and John had gone at it a couple of times, about the way John left most of Sam’s raising to his eldest son. It’s not that he didn’t understand the man’s grief, or his need to get a handle on the whole Hunter lifestyle, but family was important too. 

When the phone rang he was grateful for the distraction.

“Singer Salvage, Bobby speaking,” he answered in his gravelly voice.

_Bobby, this is Ellen. Is John around? I need to talk to him. Well, Bill does._

Bobby thought about the question a second before answering. “Pretty sure he’s out in the yard tinkering with that damned car. I can have him give you a call back, just give me some time to wrangle him up.”

_That’s fine_ , Ellen replied. _You got the number._

“Yup,” was the brusque response. Bobby hung up the phone.

He went out to the shop, walking between rows of cars in various stages of rust and decay, and found John working on the Impala as he’d expected. “Winchester, you got a phone call. What’re you doing in there, anyway?”

John poked his head out from the back seat, looking slightly surprised. “I’m trying to dislodge a damn Army man from the heating vent. One of the boys jammed it in there. Who called?”

Shaking his head Bobby said, “It was Ellen at the Roadhouse. Bill Harvelle wants to talk to you. Don’t bother asking what about because she didn’t tell me. Now if you’re done having me run around being your answering service I’ve got things to take care of.”

John trailed him back to the house and picked up the phone in the kitchen. “You got the number?” he called over his shoulder.

“On the fridge.”

He dialed and fidgeted with the phone cord while he waited for the call to connect.

“Harvelle’s Roadhouse.”

“Bill, that you? It’s John Winchester. Ellen called and said you wanted to talk to me about something.”

_I sure do. I believe I’ve got a case. Something that may help you with what you’ve been looking for. How soon can you get here?_

“Be there as soon as it takes me to pack a bag.”

John hung up the phone and tracked down Bobby in the den. “Can you watch the boys for me while I’m gone?”

Bobby sighed and looked up from the book he was still poring over. “I’m not a babysitter. You think I got nothin’ better to do than chase after those boys of yours while you’re off gallivanting?”

“Bill says he has a case. Wouldn’t talk about it over the phone, just said I needed to get to the Roadhouse.”

“If Harvelle says he wants you, you best be getting along then.” Bobby rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming on. It was going to be a long few days.

*o*o*o*

**Harvelle’s Roadhouse, Nebraska**

“Demons?” John asked, taking another long swallow his beer. He shook his head and set the bottle on the table. “I’m expected to believe in demons, Bill?”

The bar was mostly empty in the middle of the day, but even so they were sitting in Bill’s kitchen. That level of privacy had really peaked John’s interest. Admittedly he hadn’t been in the game very long but he already had a pretty good idea how these things went. Turned out there was still a hell of a lot he didn’t know.

Bill ran a hand through his dirty blonde hair and looked at John with piercing blue eyes. Ellen was fond of telling people that she’d married Steve McQueen’s identical twin. There was a certain vague resemblance but John wouldn’t go so far as to say he was an exact look-alike. 

“Look, I know this is a lot to swallow. Especially for someone who just started hunting. I’ve been doing this for a while myself and I’m still finding it a little bit hard. Demons. Yeah. But I’ve done my studying and it adds up. Just sit back and I’ll tell you.”

Bill spun a tale that dated back to the early forties, with a self-taught rocket scientist named Jack Parsons who was a devotee of Alistair Crowley. He joined a somewhat infamous English occult order back in 1941 and became a leader, taking over one of their lodges in Los Angeles. 

About that same time another guy, a young fiction writer who would go on to found Scientology, became good friends with Parsons and even lived in his home. They conducted magic rituals which were really just glorified sex shows, but they believed in what they were doing. Some of the rituals took place at Devil’s Gate Dam in Pasadena. It was said they opened a portal while trying to create a so-called ‘moonchild’ which was just a version of the anti-Christ.

John worked his way through another beer as he listened, curious as to where the story was going and how it pertained to his situation.

“Things really didn’t get grim until the mid-50s,” Bill said gravely.

Two kids, a boy and a girl, disappeared while bike riding. The sheriff’s department, hundreds of volunteers, and Navy Frogmen searched but the kids were never found. The disappearances went unsolved for thirteen years, when a guy by the name of Mac Ray Edwards confessed to kidnapping and killing the kids. Edwards helped build Southern California’s freeways and apparently had taken to hiding his murder victims under the asphalt. Edwards killed himself in 1970.

Despite Edwards’ confession the kids were still unaccounted for, their bodies never found. In 1957 an eight year old hiking on the trail in Southern California with his family ran ahead, turned a corner, and disappeared. A four hundred member search party with helicopters, blood hounds and professional trackers scoured the area and came up empty handed. Three years later a six year old out with a YMCA group got winded. The leader sent the boy back to the site, which was only 300 yards away and in full view. The chaperone watched the boy until he was just a couple feet from camp and then turned away. But in those last couple of steps the six year old vanished. Again, huge search party but not a shred of evidence.

“It continues on and on,” Bill said. “Strange disappearances, the occasional camper or hiker or kid. Always in the same area. Now, I’ve done my research. The timing’s not right for a wendigo. These things are random. At every disappearance there were unexplained scorchmarks and the smell of sulfur.”

“Sulfur?” That got John sitting up in his chair.

Bill nodded. “So the only conclusion I can come up with is this: occultists, strange ceremonies, sulfur. It has to be a demon. And judging from what you told me about the night Mary died, I’d say there’re enough similarities that it has to be considered.”

He drained his beer in one go, a gleam in his eye that John was learning was common to a hunter on the scent of something big. He could feel it himself, a flutter of excitement in the pit of his stomach. 

“So what do you think, Winchester. You in? I need a hand on this one.”

John leaned back in the chair, tipping it up on two legs, and took a moment to think things through. Bill had laid a lot of information on him and his mind reeling with the possibilities. “Well. How are we supposed to catch it? Will we be able to ask it questions?”

A grin spread across Bill’s face at the question. “I’ve had a friend of mine looking into this for me. His library might just rival Bobby’s. Demons can be caught, it’s called a Devil’s Trap. And I’ve been chasing a legend. A way to kill a demon for good.”

Reaching under the table Bill pulled out an intricately carved box and set it in front of John. “Go ahead and take a look.”

John opened the lid and saw an old revolver, and a cluster of bullets to go with it. He looked at Bill in confusion. “A gun?”

“Not just any gun. This is supposed to have been made by Samuel Colt himself. A hunter. And, if the legends are true, it’s able to kill anything. This is how we kill a demon.”

*o*o*o*

**Devil’s Gate Reservoir, California**

“Let’s get this done, Winchester. The sun will be setting soon.”

John looked up from the task at hand, laying a salt line in front of the cave entrance. The idea was to keep the demon contained until they were ready for it. Bill was standing in the middle of the Devil’s trap he’d been meticulously inscribing in the hard-packed dirt nearby. John thought it slightly ironic that they were making a Devil’s trap in a place called Devil’s Gate to trap a demon.

The two men had arrived in Pasadena a few days beforehand and immediately started chasing the local lore through libraries, back issues of newspapers, and interviews with locals. It was a tedious, mind-numbing task, pouring over stacks of age-old newspapers and cross-referencing disappearances, those that were unsolved as well as those that had been explained. Between the two of them they managed to pinpoint a location near the dam, an area small enough that the two of them could go searching. Which led them to the cave near the reservoir. 

It was little more than a small opening in the ground, far enough away from the trails to go unnoticed and overlooked by anyone who didn’t leave wander off the marked paths. But it was close enough for something supernatural to snatch a person up and disappear. John wasn’t sure if it was his mind playing tricks on him or not, but he swore he could smell a bit of sulfur at the mouth of the cave.

Bill’s plan was simple. Set up a Devil’s Trap, tempt the demon out, get it in the trap so John could ask about Mary’s death, shoot the demon with the Colt, and be back on the road by dark for the long drive home. As John was mulling this over in his head, neither one of the men noticed the sun dipping behind the mountains, or that the shadows had lengthened and covered the cave entrance. The sulfur smell intensified until even Bill could smell it where he was standing.

“John! Move!” he shouted. “It’s coming!”

He drew the Colt and moved towards John to pull him out of the way. Upon hearing the word _move_ John was already in motion trying to backpedal away from the cave and out of Bill’s way. In the suddenness of his movement John’s foot disturbed the salt line. 

Smoke came roiling out of the cave but like no smoke John had ever seen. It was black as pitch, dense and somehow alive. It moved with speed and purpose, and for a moment seemed like a mass of flies because of the unearthly buzzing. Unable to halt his forward movement quickly enough Bill ran head-on into the smoke. It hit him with great force, shaking the Colt out of his hand and throwing him backward through the air even as the smoke was absorbed into his body through his nose and mouth. It all happened incredibly fast, and both Bill and the demon that had possessed him landed right in the middle of the Devil’s trap. 

A scream, both unearthly and full of rage, somehow mingled with a very human cry of fear as Bill hit the ground. John reached into his pocket to pull out the Bible he’d brought along. Neither John nor Bill had expected smoke. The demon should’ve been more tangible, more shootable. Having it inside his friend, his mentor, his was impossible and terrible.

Bill had said exorcism was the way to get rid of a demon and John had been practicing the ritual, just in case the Colt was a bust. Bill stood up in the center of the circle more gracefully than any human should have been able to and started to speak. The voice was not his own and sounded weighted, as if the owner of that voice had survived millennia. Which probably wasn’t far from the truth. 

“Surrender yourself to me now, human, and when I take your soul I will make it as painless as possible. I can sense your fear and this one’s mind tells me of your inexperience. Give yourself up to me.”

John started speaking the first verses of the Latin exorcism. Bill’s head snapped back and the demon screamed. A moment later John heard his friend’s voice, the demon momentarily distracted enough to let his consciousness through though it clearly cost Bill judging by the pain that dripped from every word.

“Shoot me! You have to shoot me! Kill it!”

Looking at the ground John saw where the Colt had landed. He picked it up and looked helplessly at Bill, who screamed. 

“Kill it!”

John’s arm trembled as he lifted the gun and took aim through the sights, lining it up on his friend’s forehead. He didn’t know if he could pull the trigger. Didn’t know if he could kill the man standing in front of him, who had a wife and a child. It was then that the demon retook control, eyes bleeding to black. It stared at him, smirking with Bill’s mouth. 

“I’ll have your soul. And then I will have your children.”

A single gunshot echoed through the deepening dusk. John’s aim, though shaky, was true. The bullet caught Bill in the forehead. The smoke that had filled his body began to crackle, showing like lightning under his skin, behind his eyes, the air around him snapping with it.

Bill’s body crumpled to the ground, as dead as the demon inside him. John let the Colt drop from his nerveless fingers and fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. Bill had died because of his careless mistake. And he would have to live with that forever.

*o*o*o*

**Harvelle’s Roadhouse, Nebraska**

Ellen set the box she’d just signed for on the bar and grabbed the bar knife to slice open the tape. The return address was California and she instinctively knew that whatever was inside wasn’t good. She hadn’t heard from either Bill or John in days, and whatever faults her husband may have had he never failed to check in.

Beneath the crumpled packing paper inside the box were four things: a note, a plain brass urn, a wallet and a heart-breakingly familiar knife with the initials WAH carved into the handle. The note was brief.

_Ellen,_

_I’m sorry. It was my fault. He died a good man._

_John_

Ellen put one trembling hand on the urn, tears gathering in her eyes, and cursed the name Winchester.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** There's canon discrepancy regarding the date of Bill Harvelle's death. According to John's Journal, Bill died in 1986, which makes more sense than the 1995 date because John would've still been very new to the Hunter lifestyle and more apt to make a mistake that might get someone killed.


End file.
